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Unreal Tournament 3: PC demo out now!

Unreal Tournament 3, formerly known as Unreal Tournament 2007, is the next sequel in the Unreal Tournament series. Epic is promising both the now-expected multiplayer and a fleshed-out single-player mode.

When is it coming out?

This November for PC, 2008 for the PS3, 360 release date is TBA.

Additional Information

- Mark Rein has confirmed that the PS3 version of UT3 will have keyboard and mouse support. No official information on whether the 360 version will at this time.

- Epic higher-ups have been quoted as saying they expect the game to ship with approximately 40 maps.

- At the Gamespot stage demo, it was announced that you can Impact Hammer jump.

A few comments: we're still working on player and pickup visibility - we're confident we've got a system that will address those issues well. We haven't fully implemented this system because we need to make sure all character skins and level lighting is finalized before we tweak it. We also have a very nice material based system for making it easy to pick out team colors on players and vehicles at any distance, where the red or blue is boosted based on distance. That way you get natural looking characters and vehicles up close, whose team is clearly distinguishable even at the furthest viewable distance.

Those machines are way overkill for the highest detail level - the only reason it wasn't turned on was because the option isn't exposed in the menus. We do all of our play testing on 2.5 year old systems with 7800s in them - that's our target medium detail (what you were seeing today) platform. Quad core doesn't help much for performance, but having a dual core machine is a big benefit.

Stinger primary fire is still a hitscan minigun, although that build has some issues with the tracers feeling a touch laggy. Stinger alt-fire is not hitscan, however.

Optimization is still ongoing, so these numbers change on a daily basis. In general, our Unreal Engine 3 games run quite well on DirectX9 class hardware that NVidia and ATI released in 2006 and later, and amazingly well on the high-end cards including DirectX 10 cards. We also support Shader Model 2.0 hardware with minimal visual difference.

The relative performance scores between NVidia's and ATI's best cards vary from day to day as we implement new optimizations. But, for the past year, NVidia hardware has been ahead fairly consistently, and a few months ago we standardized on Dell XPS machines with GeForce 8800 GTX's for all of our development machines at Epic.

Also, the 360 work we did resulted in an engine that also runs well on low-end and mid-range PCs. This is very important for games today; the high-end PC gaming market alone is not big enough to support next-generation games with budgets in the $10-20M range. You need to run on ordinary mass-market PCs as well. In reading PC gaming websites, one might get the impression that everyone owns a dual-core PC with a pair of $600 GPUs in SLI configuration, but the reality is very different. More than 80% of PCs sold today are still single-core, and have very low-end DirectX9 graphics capabilities. Unreal Engine 3 supports those configurations well.

That '2007' in the title was promising that it would come out sometime this year... but sadly that didn't last.

Epic is up there with Blizzard and Valve in terms of "it's done when it's done" abuse. The reason why their big announcement related to Gears was the release date is because a solid release date is a pretty huge thing for Epic. =p

But I love Unreal Tournament, so I am happy to know they will take their sweet time with it...even if it means throwing a monkey wrench in my upgrade plans. (I am way out of date and desperately in need of an upgrade...originally I was going to wait until UT3 was out and I could see performance benchmarks, but now that we have some solid info, I am seriously considering doing a build after Intel drops prices again in July.)

So, off-the-shelf single core generic machines should be able to run Unreal 3? Including those that have no GPUs at all (something many of the assorted and lower level Dell/Gateway/etc PCs don't have), or is that just wishful thinking and me mis-interpreting what's implied int the quotes?

Maybe those crazy guys trying to shoehorn this onto the Wii in some form aren't as totally doomed as I had thought - they can toss a lot of resource hogging detailed texture work that wouldn't show up well in 480p anyway, have known and consistent hardware that includes a dedicated GPU...

And of course if they CAN'T get any gimped form of it to run on the Wii but it WILL run on a Gateway with a 2.x Ghz single core processor and 1 gig of RAM running XP Nintendo totally messed up it's console's ability to compete graphically when it could probably have easily just made the console box twice as big and provided something minimally capable of handling U3-based game engines for nearly the same price. Ouch.

Also, ouch for that run on sentence. And my lack of understanding of thsi type of thing leading to said run on sentence and ramblings.

So, off-the-shelf single core generic machines should be able to run Unreal 3? Including those that have no GPUs at all (something many of the assorted and lower level Dell/Gateway/etc PCs don't have), or is that just wishful thinking and me mis-interpreting what's implied int the quotes?

I think that is mostly wishful thinking. I encourage Epic to prove me wrong, but I'd think UT3 will need at least something resembling discrete graphics. Forget that Intel Media Accelerator stuff that gets stuffed into laptops and low-end desktops.

Of course, a lot of desktops now offer a PCI-express graphics slot, so I'd imagine lots of desktops are an upgrade or two away from the game.

Finally, remember that the definition of "run" is an extremely loose one. 640x480 with all details set to low and still only getting 15-20fps on average is still technically "running" a game, even though you will usually get your ass handed to you online when your frame rate starts to chug that badly. I'd expect a well-coded game, but I wouldn't expect miracles.

Will there be much new and exclusive information on UT3 (especially it's development progress) to be released, announced or showcased at E3?

and or...

Stopping short of asking for a release date, however is it possible that E3 will give the broader community some kind of indication on a target release window (eg. Q4 2007, first half 2008) opposed to an indefinite 'when it's done' time frame?

Rainbow Six:Vegas and an MMO called Fury that's currently in beta supposedly run on a beta of the Unreal 3 engine. I have to say, they need to do a lot more optimizations before they release the full version along with Tournament 3, because those two games run like Lil' Brudder on my high-ish midrange computer.

Are they still going to rely on the annoying method for distributing bonus packs that they have since UT1 or have they realized that doing it the ancient way means that 50% of people won't bother installing them on their servers? That ECE Pack they released for 2k4 was awesome and it was a damned shame how many servers didn't adopt it simply because they didn't have to.

Rainbow Six:Vegas and an MMO called Fury that's currently in beta supposedly run on a beta of the Unreal 3 engine. I have to say, they need to do a lot more optimizations before they release the full version along with Tournament 3, because those two games run like Lil' Brudder on my high-ish midrange computer.

Not only do both of those games basically look shit. But they run like shit too. I really hope they can pull some sort of cat out of the bag for UT3.

Rainbow Six:Vegas and an MMO called Fury that's currently in beta supposedly run on a beta of the Unreal 3 engine. I have to say, they need to do a lot more optimizations before they release the full version along with Tournament 3, because those two games run like Lil' Brudder on my high-ish midrange computer.

Not only do both of those games basically look shit. But they run like shit too. I really hope they can pull some sort of cat out of the bag for UT3.

Console->PC ports are notorious for poor performance (look at Lost Planet). I've never heard of the MMO.

They were running an unoptimized version on a Geforce 7xxx class card last year and they said it ran well. When most developers say they don't want to leave the low-end or mid-range in the cold I get cynical but I can believe it coming from Epic.

Uh oh... UE3 doesn't seem to support FSAA. Which means it will look like ass if I run it at 1024x768 like I usually do.

I'll probably pick it up for a console. I'm just not big into playing games on my PC unless it's an RPG or and RTS.

They may have the same name but Unreal on the PC and Unreal on the console are fundamentally different because of the controls. I'm curious to see how M/Kb on the PS3 is going to work out. There will either be a few scattered M/Kb only servers, a M/Kb nerf or there will be M/kb users all over feeding on gamepadders like sharks.

Shit, I can hardly run UT2k4 on this machine and it's not even 2 years old. I have no hope for this one........ guess I'll wait till I own a 360 some day.

Buh? Does not compute...I run UT2k4 at medium detail at 1680x1050 on an Athlon 64 2800+, a Geforce 6600 GT, and a gig of RAM, with excellent frame rates. Is it like a budget low-end prebuilt or something?

I cant run UT2k4 on max on my 8800gts dual core setup cause it messes with the screen unless i archaicly put v sync on. too many frames per second. kinda does the same too on quake 3 that i got on steam a few days ago. and thats even older.

it makes it flicker really bad, like it is static or something. maybe i need a new monitor. might steal one from the office.

Shit, I can hardly run UT2k4 on this machine and it's not even 2 years old. I have no hope for this one........ guess I'll wait till I own a 360 some day.

Buh? Does not compute...I run UT2k4 at medium detail at 1680x1050 on an Athlon 64 2800+, a Geforce 6600 GT, and a gig of RAM, with excellent frame rates. Is it like a budget low-end prebuilt or something?

I have 2004 on my laptop on full settings at the 1280x800 native res, and it's smooth. And it's not a gaming laptop or anything with a monstrous video subsystem.

I cant run UT2k4 on max on my 8800gts dual core setup cause it messes with the screen unless i archaicly put v sync on. too many frames per second. kinda does the same too on quake 3 that i got on steam a few days ago. and thats even older.

it makes it flicker really bad, like it is static or something. maybe i need a new monitor. might steal one from the office.

Have you tried downloading the newest Forceware drivers? I can't find a link right now, but I recall reading that a semi-recent driver set had a bug with Series 8 cards and UT2k4.

Shit, I can hardly run UT2k4 on this machine and it's not even 2 years old. I have no hope for this one........ guess I'll wait till I own a 360 some day.

Buh? Does not compute...I run UT2k4 at medium detail at 1680x1050 on an Athlon 64 2800+, a Geforce 6600 GT, and a gig of RAM, with excellent frame rates. Is it like a budget low-end prebuilt or something?

It's a laptop my university forces me to have (and pay exorbitantly for... $500 a semester).

So my current PC is not fantastic but it's decent. I'm hoping I can at least run it at lowest settings, because there is no way I can go without this game and I can't really afford a new console/rig to play it.

Have any of you ever tried to use a PS2 USB headset on a PC for UT2K4? I tried it the other day and it worked, the only thing is that its a one earpiece unit, and all of the sound started coming out of the one earpiece and none from my surround sound.

Anybody know if it is possible to have only the voice coming through the earpiece, and the rest of the audio through my surround sound speakers?

Regarding UT3, I am very excited to play it, but my machine is way too old to run it. i wont be getting a new gaming rig, but I may be getting a new iMac soon. Think it will run on it? with the extra ram and better vid card option?

DolbyDigital, I'm pretty sure that if you go to Start > Control Panel > Sound you can adjust your input device to be the headset and the output device to be speakers. I have seen an article about it on the web, try a Google search.

As for UT3 on the Xbox 360.. I know the PC/PS3 users can play together - will the Xbox users be able to or is this only subject to speculation?

Unreal was one of the most beautiful and atmospheric games of all time. Unreal 2 just puked all over it. What the hell went wrong there?

I was looking forward to UT3 pretty hardcore, but with TF2 out (er, I mean in "beta") as well as Quake Wars coming up, I think I'm having my fill of multiplayer-focused first-person shooters (or just FPS games in general considering the entire Orange Box).

Just wanted to give you a heads' up that we're getting pretty close to releasing the Unreal Tournament 3 Beta Demo for Windows. The Beta Demo will allow instant action play against bots as well as online multiplayer. The purpose of the Beta Demo is to test the game on a large variety of hardware configurations and get gameplay feedback from the community. The development team feels they're pretty close to being ready to release this so it could come out this week but for safety sake I'd say it should be out within two weeks.

We have a few fan sites in tomorrow to play the full game and I'm sure they'll be sharing their comments pretty soon afterward.